


Gills Breathing in the Terrible Oxygen

by Her



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fire Nation (Avatar), Fire Nation Royal Family, Imperialism, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Racism, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:40:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26665309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her/pseuds/Her
Summary: The boy is pulled forward by his wrists, faintly struggling. His jaw deliberately juts out, blue eyes burning hotter than any firebender's he has ever seen. Zuko's heart plummets. Despite the bizarre makeup plastered on his face, the jewels and robes and loose hair, he is immediately recognisable as the water tribe boy who accompanied the Avatar.The makeup doesn't hide the look of pure revulsion and hatred leveled at Zuko.Sokka is captured by the Dai Li at the fall of Ba Sing Se. Zuko is burdened with a gift from his father.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	Gills Breathing in the Terrible Oxygen

**Author's Note:**

> I have to preface this by saying that I've historically not been the best at updating work, so read at your own peril.  
> For more specific but slightly spoilery content warnings, see end notes.

When it happens, Zuko flashes back to what Azula had said that morning.

'Of course father wants you here, Zuzu,' she'd purred sweetly, 'he'll show you proof of that soon enough.'

He is trying to slip unnoticed between the throngs of chattering nobles, merchants and highborns. But given as they're merrymaking for him and Azula, given that the festivities are celebrating their triumphs, his success is limited. He cannot leave, it would be seen as incredibly disrespectful, and, most importantly, it would get back to his father. But he is repeatedly bowed to, stared at and congratulated. He feels nauseous with the weight of the stares.

Mai, who comforts him simply by the space she takes up next to him, is nowhere in sight.

He should have asked Azula what she meant that morning. When the crowd slowly hushes, all eyes fall towards where he stands, and a procession of Lo, Li, and several guards approaches, all he can think is _he should have asked Azula what she meant._

'Our Firelord wishes to present our returned Prince with the highest gift imaginable', Lo's voice booms. Zuko startles, and forces himself to hide the sudden, overwhelming unease the sentence leaves him with. He can feel eyes boring into him from all over the room, and imagines only some of them are simply curious. 

He forces his face slack, to avoid betraying his true feelings, as Li continues, 'Prince Zuko slayed the Avatar!’ and here’s the same speech that has been given about a dozen times since the fall of Ba Sing Se, the one that leaves him nauseous with visions of that waterbender’s vial of spirit water, the Avatar healed by her hands.

‘He joined his sister and captured Ba Sing Se!’ Lo booms.

‘Together, they conquered the Earth Kingdom for our glorious Nation,’ they shout together. 

‘And for this reason, he is being awarded the highest honour.’

The boy is pulled forward by his wrists, faintly struggling. His jaw deliberately juts out, blue eyes burning hotter than any firebender’s he has ever seen. Zuko's heart plummets. Despite the bizarre makeup plastered on his face, the jewels and robes and loose hair, he is immediately recognisable as the water tribe boy who accompanied the Avatar. 

The makeup doesn't hide the look of pure revulsion and hatred leveled at Zuko. 

'This is the First born son of the Chief of the Southern Water tribe,’ Lo declares. The excited whispers around the room seem distant to Zuko, as if underwater. Instead, he is enthralled by the boy’s face; a face that flinches at the sentence. Perhaps thinking of this chief father of his, and the shame he would feel if he saw his son in chains and dressed like a poodle monkey by the enemy.

The robes he wears are opulent, shockingly blue and white amidst a sea of fire nation red. Having been to both North and Southern water tribes, Zuko knows it is no traditional water tribe dress. The boy is swamped in them so that when he is shoved unceremoniously down to his knees, they fan around him, looking absurdly like he is kneeling in a cloth puddle.

‘This savage, Sokka of the water tribe, was Companion to the now exterminated Avatar!’

The Sokka boy is no longer looking at Zuko, but staring at a distant point ahead of him, his jaw clenching so tight his muscles seem to strain. His hair curtains his fixed stare, hefty blue and bronze jewels woven into it. Grape sized gold stones dangle from his clearly freshly pierced ears. Hundreds of pearls and stones and glittery gems wrap around his neck, so much so that it is a wonder he can hold himself up with the weight of it. His wrists are bound together by thick gold bracelets, fingers almost completely hidden by dozens of rings.

‘This violent barbarian, next in line to be King of snow savages, was captured as Ba Sing Se fell!’

But it is the makeup that Zuko cannot rip his eyes away from. Maybe because the face behind it bears an expression that makes his belly twist, the fire flakes he ate earlier rising up his throat, an expression so determinedly fixed yet betraying flashes of emotion. The makeup, however, is an obvious mockery - a full face of white paint, celeste waves over his eyes, a greyish line from the center of his forehead to the tip of his nose. His white lips are marred by a dark blue circle in the middle.

So horrified and enraptured by his presence is Zuko that his eyes shoot up in shock at Li’s next words.

‘Now, this barbarian is humbled by becoming Concubine to our Crown prince Zuko!’

Gasps. More whispers. Zuko feels his body heat up, the back of his neck prickling with stares. Then, smatterings of polite applause begin, quickly becoming thunderous cheers. 

The pause between her words and the cheers are clear, though; this is not immediately taken as a cause for celebration. Too strange is the situation, that the Prince should be given a male concubine, and a clearly unwilling one at that. Li and Lo pause as the cheers continue. Zuko does not dare look back down at the boy. It isn’t odd for Royals to have both male and female concubines, but concubines are in general an outdated practice, and his father is bequeathing him a male one. He takes in a deep breath to avoid thinking about that piece inside him, the piece he’s long been trying to suffocate and extinguish. His father can’t know, can he?

‘Our Firelord is gracious, benevolent!’

‘Instead of executing the savage, he has given him the most precious gift!’

‘The boy shall become civilised!’

Zuko’s eyes move around the crowd, desperate to find Mai’s. He barely takes in the old women’s continued speech about how fortunate the avatar’s companion is to now live in the Fire Nation. But he’s only met with hundreds of unknown faces, all enraptured by this speech.

‘And for this boy to become humbled, civilised, to be graced with our customs and welcomed into our society, his first gift shall be a name.’

‘One that exemplifies our culture, clearing him from the garbled grunt of a name his savage parents bestowed upon him.’

Both of them turn to face Zuko, and long moments pass where he stares, unable to understand, his brain simply not processing what they mean, what they-

‘Prince Zuko,’ says Lo, or Li? He can’t focus! ‘You shall bequeath him with name.’

‘It is the highest honour for this lowly savage,’ says the other one, ‘to be renamed by the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation.’

Zuko’s throat tightens. Despite himself, he glances down at the boy. Sokka. 

Sokka is still staring determinedly forward, but his fixed expression is no longer steady. His jaw clenches and unclenches in anger, and his eyes - Zuko is horrified to see his eyes shine, watery. His fists tremble on his lap.

He looks up at Li and Lo and clears his throat. His head is empty of names, of anything but the horror of this. But this is his enemy kneeling before him, what should he care about the humiliation of the peasant who had fought him at every turn? His uncle comes unbidden to his mind, ashamed and turning away from him. 

‘His name is Sok-’ he stops himself. ‘Lee.’ 

The thought of what he almost did throws him into a panic.

‘Sook Lee,’ he asserts, nodding to recover from his foolish misstep. Why in the spirit's names had he almost done that?

‘His name is Sook Lee.’

‘Sook Lee!’ They both shout. Deafening cheers erupt once more. But Li’s eyes narrow at him, and he worries that she is aware that he almost showed himself a traitor by defending the boy’s true name.

As the guards lift the boy back up and Lo shouts about how he is to be delivered to his rooms, Zuko makes the mistake of glancing at him again.

The loathing burning in his bright blue eyes tells him that if this boy really is to reside in his rooms, Zuko will not feel safe falling asleep ever again.

.

_For her. For her. For her._

The mantra pulses through Sokka’s head, a continuous drumbeat becoming louder and louder throughout the old women’s speeches, echoing his pounding heart. _Savage_ and _Barbarian_ and _Concubine_ , and he only manages to kneel on the spot by repeating it.

_For her. For her. For her._

‘You do realise,’ that severe woman Toza had said, after she’d had him beaten for spitting at her, beaten until his lungs struggled to fill with air, ‘that if you prove yourself to be incapable of changing these savage ways, we’ll use the next best thing?’

He hadn’t been paying her words much mind, rather working on gulping air down, like a fish struggling on land. The words _your sister_ froze him.

‘... is a waterbender, so we thought we’d leave her locked up safely,’ the woman smirked down. She knew she’d gotten his attention, ‘but if you’re going to fight this so much, I feel like she’d be a better fit for the position.’

He tried to shove himself upright, fell flat, ‘don’t you touch her!’ he rasped out. She couldn’t, they couldn’t, she’d escaped. They’d all escaped. Aang and Toph and Katara - he would know if they hadn’t. It was the only thing that kept him breathing while the fire nation murderers pierced his ears, or snarled ‘ _savage_ ’, or explained to him how a woman could be replaced in bed by a man. _Aang, Toph, Katara_. They had left Ba Sing Se.

‘Maybe we’ll figure out a way to incapacitate her bending. You know, we do have a chi bender in the palace-’

‘Leave her alone! I’ll stop! Ok, I’ll,’ he sucked in a rattled breath, ‘I’ll be good. I’ll be good. I promise, don’t touch her.’

_For her. For her. For her._

His mind is stuck in a constant loop of wondering if Katara is really here. How do they stop her from waterbending? Is she chained up in a hole somewhere, do they keep her weak, does she know he’s here too, does she know what Zuko is going to do to him? What would she say if she knew he knelt and stayed silent as murderers called their parents savages?

The guards shove him off to a different room, where several servant girls flock like rabbit geese to work over him, removing jewelry and replacing it with more of the same, brushing out his hair, scrubbing at his makeup only to paint the same colours on him again. They strip him. He blinks back tears when one goes to fetch new robes, leaving him exposed to the half a dozen people who crowd him. The lush red carpet is unforgiving under his bare knees.

It has been a week since Sokka woke up to find out he was a prisoner of the Fire Nation, and he thinks that soon humiliation won’t mean a thing to him. 

But right now, his mind drifts to his dad, to Katara. To how he’d let the prince take his name from him. The shame threatens to suffocate him. His mother gave him that name. Shame tastes like ash and smoke, it scratches at his throat and burns him from the inside out.

A servant ‘ _tsk_ ’s and he realises his tears are falling freely, smearing his makeup. Someone scrubs at his cheeks roughly. ‘No more of that, now,’ another chides. 

Sokka bites the inside of his cheek until he stops crying. 

Katara, swaddled in jester robes, their mother’s necklace replaced by a cruel mimicry made of shiny rocks and fire nation gold. Katara, prostrating herself at the feet of the ash makers as hundreds of them cheer for her degradation. Katara, fussed over and painted so she can offer herself to that beastly, ponytail Prince.

Small bottles of oils are poured over him and rubbed into his skin. Slender, cold hands work over every inch of his bare body. Other hands pull at his hair and shower it with sickly perfume. The smells choke him.

 _For her, for her, for her_ , his heart pounds.

‘Sook Lee.’

He didn’t hear her come in. Sokka shoots his eyes up to meet the vile Toza woman’s peering down at him. Ashmakers don’t like that, he knows. It’s disrespectful.

But she smiles smugly. Nods in approval.

‘Already accustomed to your name,’ she purrs, ‘good.’

Sokka’s head drops like a stone to stare at the floor’s carpet instead, tasting shameful ash in his mouth again. He hadn’t meant that! He hadn’t reacted to the stupid name! 

‘My name is Sokka,’ he says to the carpet, his voice hoarse from disuse.

‘You made me proud today,’ she continues without acknowledgement, ‘you made your family proud.’

If he could shut his ears tight like he shuts his eyes at that, and avoid hearing her every painful word. If the servant could hurry with his dresses. He can see her out of the corner of his eye, sorting through pale blue robes, white sashes, shiny, silk wraps. If they could cover him quickly so that Toza’s fiery stare would stop burning holes through his skin.

‘Tonight shall be your proudest moment yet.’

He meets her eyes again, refusing to mask his hatred, his anger. He knows none of them truly believe their words of false encouragement. Her eyes twinkle cruelly. No one should be proud to bend to their enemies, and she, and those horrible old women, and maybe even the crowd that clapped and whistled and delighted at hearing his fate, all know this.

‘My proudest moment,’ Sokka suffuses his voice with every bit of anger and certainty he has, ‘will be when I put a sword through your belly.’

The fluttery servant hands still on his body.

‘Mine shall be the day you apologise to me for those words,’ Toza says with a grin, ‘the day you learn your place, become honourable and civilised, and thank me for all the selfless effort I’ve put into your domestication.’

Sokka barks out a laugh. He has never killed, but he has also never been surer of anything than that he will not hesitate if he ever gets the chance with her.

‘Hurry up with his robes,’ Toza snaps at the servant girl, who bows hurriedly, and frantically begins distributing these to the others.

She swishes out of the room, barking at the guards, 'take him down to the Prince's rooms when they are finished with him, no delays!'

-

-

-

**Author's Note:**

> CW: There's no actual rape, but Sokka is under the belief that it will happen. There is also a lot of non-consensual touch (NOT between Sokka and Zuko), and it explores themes of degradation and humiliation. It heavily features racism towards an indigenous character.  
> I'll add tags and character tags as I go along.


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